Whether you’re building your personal brand or growing your business, we all know storytelling is powerful. But there’s one piece of the story puzzle that often gets overlooked: the obstacle.
Compelling stories have you on the edge of your seat rooting for the main character to succeed and they achieve that with a setback. This gives the story tension so that the ultimate success or failure avoidance in the end is more memorable.
Think of your favorite movie or fiction book. When did the main character almost lose everything and what did they have to do to get it back? Would that movie or book have been very exciting without that obstacle?
In marketing, that obstacle or moment of struggle is usually where a brand steps in to help transform the situation. Can you imagine what a miss it would be to skip over that entrance and jump to the end success? That would be very boring if it were a book or movie and it’s a huge miss for the brand.
Someone was telling me a story the other day about a youth who earned a spectacular scholarship. It started how I would expect: I was told how hard this youth worked, and the sacrifices he made to study and train in his sport. He sounded like a good kid for sure. But then the story went on and I learned that this youth was adopted out of foster care as a teenager only to have his adoptive parents pass away a few years later, leaving him on his own again. I’ll never forget it—and I’ll never forget to donate to scholarships when I can.
Here’s the truth: people don’t just connect with success. They relate to the struggle. Why? Because as humans, we’re wired to avoid loss even more than we’re driven to achieve success. Use this to your advantage in your marketing stories and slow them down. If you do, you’ll be unforgettable.
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